pagerunner-j:

I saw a couple comments today from people who felt like Percy’s had too much focus in the CR storyline already, particularly as compared to Scanlan, and I admittedly sighed a bit, although I also had Thoughts. To back up and kinda process them:

– Everyone at the table started with well-drawn characters, but going from those original intro bits, Percy clearly had the most narrative baked in from day one. Taliesin didn’t force it when it came to gameplay; it was there in the backstory and could have stayed there forever, un-investigated in favor of other quests. But Matt took it and ran with it, because let’s be honest, it was interesting, and a great excuse for him to build out that chunk of the world. You can’t really blame him for grabbing that particular gun off the mantel. You can observe, fairly, that not too many of the players put one that shiny up there to play with in the first place.

– On that note, it’s still kind of ironic that Scanlan’s big blowup centered on the other characters not caring about his personal life, because it may have been true, but a lot of that’s on him for not sharing. And I’m honestly still curious how much of that was a long-term in-character choice, and how much of it developed at a meta level because of planning decisions one way or another on Sam’s part. Scanlan wasn’t always played terribly seriously (let’s not forget that his character origin was basically “how do I make the most ridiculous character ever? Okay: GNOME BARD!”), and the path forward from that and into more serious matters could easily have been “we never delved into more than this. Well, let’s make the issue be the fact that we never delved into this.” Either way, Scanlan became a meatier character (ahem) later in the game, but in the earlier stretches there was simply less to build from, and especially in a group that big and that busy, you’ve also got to assume that everyone’s going to go for the big, shiny plot points and that more subtle matters or unspoken problems won’t really get noticed.

– In comparison, Tary got more character development in a handful of episodes than Scanlan got over much longer chunks of time, because everyone played it very differently. It was sort of inevitable since it was a new character to figure out, and that’s going to draw a lot of focus, plus a lot of playing with the new dynamic since of course that’s an interesting upheaval for everyone. He was also on a bit of a timer, although his stay was longer than I think anyone planned. But good lord, was the approach with Tary different from Scanlan. We had all of his family drama and personal goals and conflicts fully drawn and presented right up front, with a lot for everyone to get their teeth into, and it was great.

– Not coincidentally, I came to like Tary a lot. I miss him, and am sad.

– I’m not sure if I have a conclusion to this except to say that character and story development are both goddamn interesting and can happen in a lot of ways and at different paces. That doesn’t mean it’s a competition. It does mean bring shit to the table, because otherwise nothing’s gonna grow.

– …I did not mean to make that a compost metaphor. On the other hand, I feel like Scanlan would approve.

Yes, exactly! All of this! When Matt has to scramble for bits and pieces to get a plot hook going, not much of a plot hook is going to develop there. And given the sparse backstory Scanlan gave, a daughter and his former travelling troupe as recurring characters is actually plenty. There’s not much more story you can develop from there.

Goblins aren’t very likely to target you after they kill your mother. They’re little pests who don’t bother who gets away as long as they get their loot. They might pop up in a campaign and your might get to kill a few for vindication, but that’s it. Those were the two points Scanlan brought to the table for story development. Both of those came up.

This is actually a pretty common problem, but except for Pike, all of the other characters did have more narratively rich conflict in their backstories. The twins had their father and a dragon. Grog had a roaming herd of goliaths. Keyleth had a very clearly defined journey to take. Same with Tibs, had he stuck around long enough.

The dad happened to be around even pre-campaign, the dragon was, you know, a dragon, the herd became relevant, and Kiki took her journey. Matt tries to incorporate all of these things. It’s just that attaching your character to a political plot in a town they have a claim to and also releasing guns in the world is going to come up more. And even Percy’s development and screentime pales in comparison to what Vax just happens to stumble into on a regular basis (and then purposefully exclude others, especially Vex, from, but that is reeaaally not something to get into here).

So yeah, the story was designed in such a way that everything the players brought to the table in regards to backstory eventually paid off one way or another. Some brought more to the table, others just got… The opposite of lucky, and here we are.

Literally the only real slight against Scanlan I can see on a narrative level is that he was just handed his vestige. Even Pike at least got to travel somewhere for hers.